Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Scotia, CA

Scotia is an unincorporated census-designated place in Humboldt County, a historic redwood lumber town on the Eel River along U.S. Route 101, about 8.5 miles southeast of Fortuna.

Scotia was founded in 1863 as Forestville by the Pacific Lumber Company (PALCO) to house workers for its lumber operations, making it one of America's classic company towns.

The town was renamed Scotia in 1888, a nod to the many Nova Scotians among its workforce and to avoid confusion with another Forestville in Sonoma County.

Scotia was entirely owned by the Pacific Lumber Company until the corporation's 2008 bankruptcy — it was one of the last company-owned towns in the United States, and its homes are only now being subdivided into lots for individual sale.

The company's first sawmill was built at Scotia in 1887, and its Mill B, built in 1910, was long billed as the world's largest redwood lumber manufacturing facility.

Most of Scotia's existing houses were built between the 1920s and 1950s, and the town survived the Great Depression that closed most other Pacific Northwest company towns.

Scotia sits in Eel River flood country — during the great flood of December 1964 the river crested at a gauge height of 72 feet at Scotia.

A railroad reached Scotia in 1885, linking the mill town to the Humboldt Bay and Eel River Railroad at Alton.

Pacific Lumber was taken over in a hostile buyout by the Maxxam corporation in 1986, ending more than a century of Murphy family control before the 2008 bankruptcy split the mill from the town.

The 2020 census counted 681 residents in Scotia.